Why BIG

Why BIG

We founded BIG in 2015 to combine our skills and experience in cutting-edge Computer Science, Business & Management, and Decision Making sciences.

Before BIG, Aurélie was a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for several years, working with executives of leading global companies across North America and Europe. As an expert in quantitative topics and data analytics, Aurélie saw first-hand how hard it is to leverage technology successfully in business settings and how hard it is to find world-class technical experts in (non-tech) corporations.

Before BIG, Tom worked in academia as a professor in Computer Science, doing research on AI and computer security, in Virginia, at UCL in London, and the University of Texas at Austin. While writing papers and presenting his results at scientific conferences across the world, Tom realized the gap between state-of-the-art research and real-world companies (outside the high tech and start-up sector).

With this context, Tom and Aurélie decided to join forces and create BIG. At the beginning, we focused on designing and implementing Decision Games, a pioneer interactive approach to war games for business settings. We created our own innovative game platform, combining AI, computational economics, and advanced data analytics. This is where our original name, Business Interactive Games (BIG), and our original logo comes from.

However, in order to be effective, Decision Games require data input from companies wishing to use them, and therefore strong Data Management and Data Analytics infrastructure. We soon realized that most companies were not so good in those capabilities, so we set out to help them improve. Our Decision Games remain available for technologically advanced companies with strong IT and Data capabilities.

This is how we evolved into an expert firm helping companies of all sizes leverage technology effectively for business outcomes to increase productivity and resilience. As originally intended, we still combine cutting-edge technical expertise with deep understanding of business challenges, and we focus on issues that are major concerns for leaders today: AI & Automation, Data, Cyber Security & Resilience, and IT Infrastructure & Cloud. While our expert firm is small in size, we like to work on big problems, and therefore found our name BIG even more appropriate as our company evolved!